24-11-03 23:18, Daniel J. Milton wrote:
> Here's a comment by George Knysh, that I got as e-mail, with
> my reply and then his, explaining the odd path to Cybalist:
>
> Hello Dan,
> I've taken a break from Cybalist due to other pressing matters, but
> I still read the postings a couple of times a week. In connection
> with your item on "dog" I have a rather dilettantic question (which
> might be put to Piotr and other experts). The word for "dog" in some
> (at least) Slavic languages is PES. Now if this is a
> Satemizedversion of PEK- (which in PEI and later in
> daughterlanguages stands for "farm animal") could we draw
> someconclusion about the "dog" being at one
> point in time the "animal par excellence" for PIE-ans (with this
> specific meaning only (?) surviving in Slavic? How far back would
> did take us and what other implications might we come up with as to
> very early PIE economies?
Slavic *pIsU is a difficult word. On the face of it, it looks like an
ordinary *-o stem < *pik^o-s, but there are no obvious cognates outside
Slavic (not a rare situation, as far as 'dog' words are concerned; Eng.
dog < OE *dogga is isolated as well). It might be a derivative of
*peik^- 'paint, dye, mark with spots' (cf. Slavic *pisati 'paint,
write', *pIstrU 'variegated, pied' < *pik^-ro-), which does underlie
some names of spotted animals. But other analyses are hard to rule out
completely: *pIsU might also be an old *-u stem (there's little real
difference in Slavic, except for some particularly well-behaving stems),
and Slavic *I sometimes reflects for a secondary weak grade (as in
*c^Ityre 'four'), so in theory at least a relationship with *p(e)k^u- is
imaginable, although unprovable.
Since the Baltic languages have unquestionable reflexes of *k^wo:n (cf.
Lith s^uo~, gen. s^un~s) and of *pek^u- with the meaning 'cattle' (Old
and dial. Lith. pe~kus, OPr. pecku -- note however the absence of
satemisation, which may suggest a loan), Slavic is definitely the odd
man out and *pIsU is more likely a local innovation (cf. <dog>) than a
miraculously surviving archaism.
Nevertheless, I have also wondered if the original meaning of *pek^u-
wasn't 'any domesticated critter' (as opposed to *g^Hwe:r 'bestia fera'
> Slavic *zve^rI). Then one of its derivatives (with the
"individualising" compositional element *-hon-) might have become
specialised to refer to dogs (the earliest domesticates), while *pek^u-
itself came to mean flocks or herds of livestock. It's pure speculation,
of course, but I prefer this kind of speculation to proposing
Proto-World *kuan- a la Merritt Ruhlen.
Piotr